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Q and A: What are some ideas for SEO lead generation?

I’ve recently struck out on my own as a search engine optimization freelancer and I’m finding it really difficult to get new leads.

I can’t afford to pay per click the amounts that the big players are paying on Google AdWords and I’m not confident enough with Bing Ads to try that. I did experiment with some Facebook advertising, but the response wasn’t great so I don’t think it’s really where my market is.

I know you recommended in the past to try some freelancing sites, but I was on Elance for a month and was out-bid by a lot of SEO crews based in South East Asia, who seem to low-ball everybody and win most of the projects. I know my work is higher quality than what they are offering, but it doesn’t seem to matter to the client.

Any creative ideas for how I can generate new leads and find genuine SEO clients who are willing to pay fairly for quality?

Thanks
Anthony

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Hi Anthony

I feel your pain, I truly do. Having my own SEO consultancy, I am fully aware just how challenging it can be to secure a steady flow of new business and compete with rivals after the same clients.

Here are my tips for gaining new SEO leads:

1) Install MySiteAuditor on Your Main Sales Page – My Site Auditor is a custom-built lead generation tool for SEO professionals and freelancers. You simply install the code somewhere prominent on your site and it allows visitors to generate a one minute SEO audit for a URL of their choice, for a particular keyword or phrase. Visitors need to enter their email address in order to generate the audit, creating automatic leads to follow up.

You can see it in action over at Site Audit NZ. There is a 10 day free trial and two low cost monthly subscription plans, depending on whether you want to embed the tool, white-label the audits and have leads emailed to you. We use it and it’s a great way to increase SEO sales and leads by simply embedding a useful tool on your site.

2) Utilize Keyword Alert and Social Monitoring Tools – Services like Google Alerts and the fairly new Talkwalker Alerts allow you to track mentions of your target keywords or search phrases across the web without lifting a finger. You simply choose the search terms you want to be alerted about and then the service will email you whenever it finds a new mention of those terms in Google search results (for Google Alerts) or in news sites, blogs and discussion boards across the entire web (for Talkwalker). Klout, Social Mention and HootSuite all offer a similar service to track real time mentions on social sites. Raven Tools used to offer the same, but have sadly discontinued it.

What this means is that you can pin-point potential leads by what they are searching for / talking about. So, for example, we are always looking for new students to join Search Engine College and a great way to find potentials is to see who is discussing topics like “I want to learn SEO” or “Teach myself SEO”. We can then (tactfully) approach those persons directly on the sites where the discussion was found to see if our courses might be a good fit for them.

You can do the same thing by creating alerts for phrases like “Need help with SEO” or “SEO my site”. Just make sure you follow up fast though, because discussions can become stale quickly, especially on social networks. Also be super careful that you take a helpful approach rather than dive in with a sales pitch, or you’re likely to frighten off any genuine potentials.

3) Give Bing Ads a Whirl – You can teach yourself how to use it fairly quickly and the CPC is much, much cheaper than Google AdWords in my experience. If you want to contact me directly, I can even send you a USD100 voucher for ad credit (as I’m a Bing Partner).

4) Give Stuff Away – Got an ebook or a white-paper lying around? Turn it into a free give-away on your site, in exchange for a visitor’s email address. Companies like HubSpot do this type of incentive-based lead generation exceptionally well. With a little forethought, any client case study or interesting SEO research can be turned into a downloadable incentive to part with an email address. Just make sure you have their permission to contact these visitors with your marketing messages later on.

These tactics may not work for you, but they consistently work for me, so I’m confident you will get some good results.

About Kalena Jordan

In my day job, I'm Director of Studies and tutor at the online training institution Search Engine College. In my spare time, I'm a search engine agony aunt and SEO to global clients. I've been marketing websites online since 1996 and blogging about search since 2002. To learn more, visit My Google+ Profile

Don’t sit back and wait for leads to come to you.
Social Media is one of the biggest advantages to independents, freelances and entrepreneurs.

Where as “companies” have to “pay” for people to make social posts (either hire professionals or pay staff for their time), you can do it in the quieter moments.
Better yet, people will be communicating with your businesses leading expert – you.

It’s a good way to generate Peer Review – other SEOs may pay attention to you … and little says more than a bunch of SEO’s sharing your content, or getting hat-tips from industry names.

You also get to establish yourself, show your depth and breadth of knowledge, target targets, generate links to your content etc., as well as potentially making direct contact with your target audience.
Can you think of another medium or channel that gives you all of that?

As well as social platforms like FaceBook and GooglePlus, there are of course the forums. Established groups like the Google forums, DaniWeb, WebMasters World, SEO stack exchange, Quora etc.
All of these allow you to get direct contact with people and issues, and show off your knowledge/skills. You may also pick up a bit of work here and there.

In the mean time, you could always look at things like Fivrr, and low-bid just to get the money in.
Alternatively, look at joining local Business Networks to meet potential clients. Offer a free information piece, or offer up a few hours of your time for some general advice. See if the real-world approach can help?

All great suggestions! If I may add, I would also suggest offering free SEO check-ups / mini-consultations to interested parties / clients, in exchange for social media currency (tweets, mentions, etc.). It can give your clients an idea about the quality of your work vs. the rest while appearing as a risk-free opportunity to evaluate your skills, while you can add these consultations to your portfolio (with their permission, of course!)

Lead generation is not easy. if you’re a freelance and you don’t have the budget and resource to spend like me you’re going to have a hard time. We I think the advice given here is good. You can really utilize them and get better results.